By MEGHAN PETERS, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Raised just outside Portland, 24-year-old Kayanna Warren has seen a lot of growth. The Pacific Northwest's population has risen by about 4 million during this University of Washington alum's life. Many new houses and businesses have been constructed right before her eyes.

But not without trees coming down.

Hoping to find a balance between what people need and what people need to preserve, the former conservation biology and international studies major has spent much of her young adult life searching for solutions.

"I just always felt there were a lot of improvements that could be made," she said.

This summer, Warren and 12 others in their early to mid-20s are hoping to make these improvements by raising awareness of and finding solutions for environmental issues and Native American concerns with the Udall Legacy Bus Tour. The excursion, funded by the Morris K. Udall Foundation, a government agency dedicated to educating young people about environmental and tribal policy, began in Washington, D.C., on June 12. The group has since made 22 stops throughout the U.S., where riders have participated in projects from replanting trees to teaching photography to young people in national parks. The tour ends Aug. 4 in Tucson, Ariz.

Last weekend and earlier this week, the riders were in Seattle to help EarthCorps remove invasive ivy from West Seattle's Me-Kwa-Mooks Park and to visit the UW to learn about green initiatives on campus.

Warren, a former EarthCorps crew member, helped organize Saturday's events at the park and explained the advantages of removing non-native plants such as blackberry bushes and ivy. These plants, many of which came to the area with Seattle's first white settlers, make it difficult for native plants, such as conifers, to grow.

"It's hard for trees to survive with that kind of resource competition," Warren said.

Though much of the tour has involved public service and teaching others, on Monday the Udall scholars again became students as they learned about sustainable efforts at the UW. The group attended a panel discussion at Merrill Hall, the first "green" building on campus, which Tom Hinckley, director of the Center for Urban Horticulture, said was built mainly because of student efforts.

"(Young people's) naivete that good ideas will work gives them the energy to remain optimistic," Hinckley said.

Eli Zigas, a 23-year-old Udall scholar and graduate of Grinnell College in Iowa, recognized that a great deal of the tour focuses on positive happenings in the realm of sustainability and tribal policy. The Washington, D.C., native said he hopes this will show the reason for his generation's optimism.

"There's an incredibly broad array of people, institutions and communities who are finding solutions to so many issues," he said.

Morris K. Udall, namesake of the tour, represented Arizona in the U.S. House from 1961 to 1991. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 and continued his career in the House, holding the position of chairman of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs (which is now called the Committee on Resources) for more than 10 years. He died in 1998 of complications from Parkinson's disease.

The Udall Foundation, established in 1992 to honor his legacy, created the tour as a celebration of the agency's 10-year anniversary. The bus was donated by Motor Coach Industries of Schaumburg, Ill., and uses 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent low-sulfur diesel. It is the first motor coach approved by the University of Vermont's Green Coach Certification program.

As part of their effort to spread the word about environmental and Native American issues, riders have been blogging. Entries focus on what the group has learned about sustainability and tribal communities along the way.

In addition to the tour's stated goal of highlighting young people's efforts to raise awareness of environmental and Native American issues, each activist has his or her motivation. Zigas was impressed to see each institution he visited found its solution to the same environmental problem, while Warren has found a new sense of direction.

"It's a really good opportunity to find out what I want to do with my life," she said.